


Pyrrhic

by rayningnight



Series: Pyrrhic [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dimension Travel, Fix-It, Gen, Multi, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-08
Updated: 2016-09-08
Packaged: 2018-08-13 13:48:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7978900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rayningnight/pseuds/rayningnight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The victory was too costly, and they’ve figured rewriting the past is better than living a broken future — a future they have no right to. She's sure meddling with time is going to end badly, but <em>he</em> obviously doesn't give a damn; they jumped.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pyrrhic

“…you’re sure?”

He chuckles, sweeping his bloodied hand at the charred ruins and still streaming smoke. “Is there really any other choice? They’re gone.  _Everyone_ is gone.” He throws his head back with laughter. “But, of course we survive. We always  _somehow_ survive.” They both hear and ignore the note of hysteria as he lets the red-and-white hat drop.

Suddenly, he stops grinning like the awful parody of her childhood. “Victory has never tasted so bitter, ne, Sakura?”

A wind picks up, and the famous headpiece is blown off the stone head of the Yondaime Hokage, the only monument left partially intact in the aftermath. The two don’t watch as the once-coveted hat is snatched from the air; another figure joins them, silent.

“Naruto…“ the pink-haired woman falters. A breeze billows her leader’s once-white and red robes, though now they are simply red, some splotches a faded pink, some still deep dripping crimson. 

Her mind flashes to when the blond was young and wore orange and black, never a speck of that blood colour, confident in doing what had been impossible — and she suddenly finds herself actually considering her Hokage’s absurd — stupid—  _brilliant_  idea.

“Kurama’s agreed to follow through too, y’know. Says he’ll remember if we contact him once we jump, so it doesn’t matter if he ‘dies’ in this timeline,” and then he snickers, and Sakura hates the wry sound that does not correspond with her childhood memories, “since he’ll technically still be alive in the past, just with a load of memories of a time that won’t exist, unlike—“

“How far back are we going, idiot Hoka— _dobe_.” The other figure cuts himself off. Old habits die hard, Sakura muses, as she lays a hand on Sasuke. Both of them wished Naruto could’ve kept the title, the acknowledgment and pride of this blond man’s attained dream.  

The attained dream now scattered with the ashes of their village.

Naruto finally looks at her with those brilliant blue eyes, darkened with blood and battle and bitterness, and she can’t help noticing that there’s more sky than ocean, endless and _empty_  — but then he smiles that disarming face-splitting grin, and for once in a long time, there’s that light rising in them like the dawn of a new day.

Like the old number-one unpredictable, hyperactive, knuckle-headed ninja.

“No idea!” his smile curls to something like a time unforgotten, “but it’ll definitely be before the kids were born. Before  _this_ can ever happen — but I can’t calibrate an exact date, ‘cause space-time jutsu are erratic. Just an estimate.”

Then he speaks more of his absurd, stupid, brilliant, and so  _Naruto-esque_ idea, making wild and enthusiastic gestures and Sakura’s sure the sheer absurdity of it will tip the plan off and they’ll be doomed to fail. They won’t even know the exact year they’ll be landing in. They could be in their genin days. During the Massacre. Years before they were even  _born_.

But…

The victory was too costly, and they’ve figured rewriting the past is better than living a broken future — a future they have no right to. Not when their village, their comrades, their friends, their family are gone. She's sure meddling with time is going to end badly, but  _he_ obviously doesn't give a damn.

She suddenly finds herself feeling the same as them.

And as hours pass, and their packs are filled with what can be scoured, and a seal is drawn with aching amounts of blood and exhausting amounts of chakra, her comrade and brother and leader is laughing along with the massive nine-tailed demon in their midst who’s sacrificing itself for the whole purpose of their impossible quest that may or may not even work just because of _Naruto_ —

But all she can think about is how she hasn’t heard her Hokage laugh like that in years. Hasn't _seen_  her Naruto like that in years.

And she understands.

**“I’ll miss ya, Kit.”**

“Hey, we’ll be meeting again once your memories are jogged up, Kurama.”

Sakura still couldn’t believe the two came to some sort of half-friendship until then, when she’s seeing first-hand the genuine sorrow in both their eyes as Naruto holds close, nose to nose, arms wrapped around the muzzle of the great beast. With no prompt, suddenly the kitsune-demon is gone in a flash of red and blue particles, slowly erasing the twin whisker markings on Naruto’s face as the demonic chakra is burning out. Soon the space the Kyuubi once resided is replaced with a swirling vortex at their front that reminds Sakura of the Tailed Beast Ball, only shrunken, two-dimensional and maybe a bit more dauntingly destructive when she peers in and there’s no end. She looks over and memorizes this moment: sees a sharp foxy smirk under glowing blue eyes disappear into the abyss, red pinwheels above a small smile flickering after, and she grins savagely as she leaps right behind her precious people.

They jumped. 

 

-.. ---

 

When he finally escaped, leaving behind throats sliced and bodies crooked, he slowed his run to a stop in the outer woods and stared at his hands. He was so used to a life of monochrome and shades, just passing by, just enduring until the next day.

And now his hands dripped with crimson and smelled of copper.

He fisted them, feeling more hollow than remorseful at the half-dried blood.

Because Tihana-neesama deserved it.

Now he was free. No longer did he serve them. No longer did he have to sit prettily as Tihana-neesama ordered him, or as Senri-niisan painted his face and wrapped him in silk and stockings.

Because they were dead along with any witnesses — the nice mail boy who respectfully called him, “Chihato-san,” the young guard who started mere days ago, the two  _oiran_ practicing in the closet with both hands and tongue.

Feeling parched and wanting to wash away the feel of slick blood, he walked on until his feet ached. He wondered, did this hollow feeling ever leave? Or would he always be like this now, just surviving for the next day? Lost in his thoughts, he tripped and stumbled on the mud of a running stream.

Pausing, he stared at the surprisingly crystalline water in the dank forest.

He knew he was appealing — a pretty boy with so fine features that he was quite the elevated  _maiko_ , given some dolling up and lessons. His smile was highlighted by his unique eyes, and was the only reason he’d lived for so long.

But in all his years since he learned to speak and write and dance, he'd never seen his own face.

He hadn't been allowed a room for himself, let alone a mirror of his own...

Peering down curiously, he continued farther down the stream until he found the brook, where the water slowed and no longer rippled his reflection.

And he gasped as he saw dark hair fall around a pale face because—

_— he remembers a different childhood pain, neglect and fear instead of abuse and assault, remembers a family chosen by bonds instead of a family built by profit, remembers bloodshed and hope, remembers betrayals and unexpected friendships and there is so much and yet not enough and where are the others and—_

He has long dark hair crusting with the blood of the lowborn, the prostitutes and wastrels, smooth white skin stretched over slightly gaunt cheekbones, but what startled him into remembrance, what triggered the avalanche of memories of a future yet unfolded are the large amber eyes.

Though not slit, the fine features, the apathetic expression he always wore (but he never was apathetic before in the future remembered—?), the purple markings unveiling beneath splattered scarlet liquid—

Why does he look so much like Orochimaru?

 

-. --- -

 

She dreamt of a little blonde girl who gave her a red ribbon when she was sad. She dreamt of a bloody war between gods and men. She dreamt of wonders and love and nightmares and suffering.

She slept often, took naps anywhere, for this story was important.

She knew.

She believed.

"Wake up, wake up, _wake up_ already!" a voice screeched in her ear.

But it wasn’t a story at all.

“Oh no, you’ve  _infected_ her! I never should have introduced Shikaku, I never should have let her meet  _you!_ Now, my own sister is turning into a Nara!” Suddenly, her brother was wailing.

Quickly snapping out of her daze, she looked over at her twin, who was ~~pouting-~~ fuming with her arms crossed and seafoam eyes narrowed, and then up at her brother. With his long silvery-Hatake hair from their mother and the wailing, he could have been mistaken _as_ her mom. She frowned. Aniki was being really stupid today, she thought, and glancing at her sister who was now giving her the silent treatment, no help would be coming from there. So, she turned to the only sane person in the room, Shikajo-niisan, who was standing next to a hysterical Inoki-niisan and giggling Chouya-neesan and—

Then the dreamy fog dissipated from her perception, the nightmares and dreamscapes revealed as a past of the future she would never let pass for she remembered—

_A kunoichi saving her and inspiring her to be better than her best, two shinobi hated or loved suddenly getting under her skin and burrowing into her heart, a master who taught her to kill and to heal and to never regret yet never forget, and a teacher with a mask of both fabric and feelings becoming—_

“Sakumo, you’re supposed to be backing me up! Not just standing there like _—_ like _—_ likesome overindulgent _father!_ ”

“...Dan, when you’re with your baby sisters... The company always tends to lose an adult and gain an infant—“

“ _Oi!_  You take that back, you _mutt!“_

 

.-.. .. .

 

Today was the day he would do it.

Clenching his fists, he stared at himself in the mirror, locking eyes with his reflection and concentrated.

With the handseal, he quickly pushed chakra into his eyes and whispered.

“Byakugan!”

And then, suddenly, _he_ _saw everything._ He could see chakra signatures from blocks away, sense all 329 people in his vision — civilians with their near-nonexistent coils to the bright lit systems of the ANBU elite.

And then, suddenly,  _he remembered—_

_the feel of sharp pricks, bloody tears down his cheeks, a clan of black and red, a pair of eyes from a brother so old and so weary that gifted him nightmares he did not want, a team of misfits, of friendship, of love, of betrayals and bonds beyond time and space and two others he could never ever let go of—_

Quickly deactivating it, he gasped, chancing a look to the mirror and found a Hyuga boy staring back with thinly-veiled panic.

“Aniue?”

“Aniki?”

He didn’t have the energy to hide his panic further when he saw Hiashi and Hizashi — _my **brothers** —_ opening the rice-paper doors, both twins looking even younger than the reflection in the mirror.

**Author's Note:**

> [What they didn’t expect was waking in bodies that weren’t theirs. Of people that should not exist.]
> 
> Next part won't be up for a long time. But I had to throw _something_ out into this fandom before I'm immersed in schoolwork again. Thanks for reading and comment below if you see a typo.


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